Teaching protagonist and antagonist and studying how the author created each one can help students understand story elements better and their own fiction writing. (If you are a writer, this can also help you!) When I do school visits about my writing process, I share with students information about my main protagonist, Anna Green (13-years-old), and my antagonist, Mrs. Franklin (a busybody, know-it-all in her late 30s). Of course, they like to hear about Anna–she’s the girl on the front cover and has an amazing spirit. But to be honest, they LOVE to hear about Mrs. Franklin. Everyone loves a good bad guy, or in this case, woman. But what I like to point out is during my planning and revising stages, I had to give Anna some imperfect qualities and Mrs. Franklin something redeeming. She couldn’t be mean just to be mean–well, she would be much more interesting if she was mean for another reason.
I remember some writing workshop I went to a long time ago where the author said that your antagonist has to have a reason for doing what he/she is doing. If the character is just evil or mean, it’s not as interesting or even realistic, as if there’s a reason. I really hadn’t done this when I first created my antagonist, and so back to the drawing board I went.
If children are reading the book, you can ask them: “Why do you think Mrs. Franklin, the antagonist, acts the way she does? What does she seem to like? What doesn’t she?” HOPEFULLY, if I did my job, children will realize that 1. Mrs. Franklin loves her family above all–she almost loves them too much because she doesn’t think of others and overlooks her family’s faults 2. She is a Southern citizen all the way (during the War Between the States)–she’s proud and part of her identity rests in the fact that she is a prominent member of society as a doctor’s wife. That’s why she expects slaves to act a certain way, children to act a certain way, etc.
Anna, the protagonist, in turn, can not be perfect. That’s hard sometimes as writers–to make our babies imperfect. I actually had a much easier time doing this than working on Mrs. Franklin. A lot of my plot was tied to Anna and how she reacted to the events around her. She has low self-esteem and doubts herself about almost everything. The challenge with her and with many protagonists is that authors have to show them growing and changing, so at the end, the solution to the problem is realistic and accomplished mostly by the protagonist (especially in children’s books). Again, with children you can ask, “What are Anna’s good qualities? What does she have problems with? How does she change throughout the book? What makes her change?”
As you discuss Finding My Place: One Girl’s Strength at Vicksburg with children, they will see elements that need to be in a fiction story and hopefully incorporate some of these ideas into their own work. I try to use the terms, protagonist and antagonist, when I speak with children, so they become familiar with the terms.
Are you a teacher? How do you teach these skills?
Are you a writer? How do you create your two main characters?
